[Majorityrights News] Trump will ‘arm Ukraine to the teeth’ if Putin won’t negotiate ceasefire Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 12 November 2024 16:20.
[Majorityrights News] Alex Navalny, born 4th June, 1976; died at Yamalo-Nenets penitentiary 16th February, 2024 Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 16 February 2024 23:43.
[Majorityrights Central] A couple of exchanges on the nature and meaning of Christianity’s origin Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, 25 July 2023 22:19.
[Majorityrights News] Is the Ukrainian counter-offensive for Bakhmut the counter-offensive for Ukraine? Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, 18 May 2023 18:55.
Posted by DanielS on Saturday, 02 September 2017 07:54.
“We’re talking total destruction”
Irma worst case scenario: Cat 5 storm, direct hit on Miami.
“Major Hurricane Irma now ... I’d be surprised if storm didn’t become Cat 5 during next 5-7 days. Many EPS ensembles are very intense.
It would be much worse than Harvey. Miami is built right up to the ocean, all those tall building would receive the impact of Cat 5 winds plus devastating storm surge. We are talking total destruction.”
- Ryan Maue, Meteorologist (PhD) | Free ex parte opinions on Weather | Hurricanes | Climate Science | Politics | Think Tanker @CatoCSS
The Economic Collapse, “Category 6? If Hurricane Irma Becomes The Strongest Hurricane In History, It Could Wipe Entire Cities Off The Map”, 1 Sep 2017:
Meteorologists have been shocked at how rapidly Hurricane Irma has been strengthening, and they are already warning that if it hits the United States as a high level category 5 storm the devastation would be absolutely unprecedented. Of course we are already dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, and many experts are already telling us that the economic damage done by that storm will easily surpass any other disaster in all of U.S. history. But there is a very real possibility that Hurricane Irma could be even worse. According to the National Hurricane Center, at 5 PM on Friday Irma already had sustained winds of 130 miles per hour. But it is still very early, and as you will see below, next week it is expected to potentially develop into a category 5 storm with winds of 180 miles per hour or more.
I suppose that it is appropriate that such a powerful storm has a very powerful name. In old German, the name “Irma” actually means “war goddess”…
The name Irma is a German baby name. In German the meaning of the name Irma is: Universal, from the Old German ‘irmin’. War goddess.
Irma began forming on Wednesday, and it intensified at a faster rate than any storm that we have seen in nearly 20 years…
Hurricane Irma formed early Wednesday in the warm waters off the coast of West Africa — and took just 30 hours to strengthen to a Category 3. That’s the fastest intensification rate in almost two decades. By Friday afternoon, the storm had also grown noticeably larger in size with a well-defined eye, a classic sign of a strong hurricane.
Though Irma poses no immediate threat to land, the outlook is ominous: In the Atlantic, Irma is expected to pass through some abnormally warm waters — the primary fuel source for storm systems. The official National Hurricane Center forecast says it will remain at major hurricane status for at least the next five days, and, in a worst-case scenario, Irma could eventually grow into one of the strongest hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic.
So how powerful could Irma eventually become?
According to Michael Ventrice of the Weather Channel, Irma could easily become a “super typhoon” with “sustained speeds of over 180mph”…
Veteran USA forecaster Michael Ventrice posted the track model on Twitter overnight and warned it looked like the storm could be a “super typhoon”, with sustained speeds of over 180mph.
He wrote: “These are the highest windspeed forecasts I’ve ever seen in my 10 yrs of Atlantic hurricane forecasting.
“Irma is another retiree candidate.”
The scale we have right now really never envisioned storms that powerful. In fact, some have suggested that we need to add a “category 6” to describe the kind of “super storms” that are now developing in the Atlantic.
One of the reasons why Irma is so unique is because it is a “Cape Verde hurricane”…
There are a few factors that worry hurricane forecasters more about this storm when compared to the myriad other tropical storms and hurricanes that tend to form in the Atlantic.
First, it’s a so-called Cape Verde storm, having formed off the west coast of Africa. These storms tend to be the ones that go on to affect the U.S., after gathering strength for many days during their march across the ocean. For example, Hurricane Andrew, which was the most recent Category 5 storm to hit the U.S. in 1992, was a Cape Verde-type storm.
Because they begin at a relatively low latitude and move west rather than northwest, it can be harder for upper level winds blowing across North America to pick up and steer these types of storms away from the U.S. coast.
Let us hope that this storm does get steered away from our coastlines at some point, but so far that is just not happening.
Many hurricanes are often weakened by wind shear, but that isn’t happening to Irma either. In fact, CNN is reporting that “Irma will remain in a low-shear environment for the next several days”…
A strong high-pressure ridge to the north of Irma, over the Atlantic, is steering the storm to the west and limiting the wind shear in the upper levels of the atmosphere, which has allowed the storm to grow so quickly. Wind shear is like hurricane kryptonite, and prevents storms from forming or gaining strength.
Unfortunately, Irma will remain in a low-shear environment for the next several days, so there isn’t much hope that Irma will weaken any time soon.
Basically, conditions are nearly ideal for a “super storm” to develop, and if Irma does make it to the U.S. the destruction that it causes could be absolutely off the charts.
Of course at this point there is no guarantee that it will ever reach the United States. But if it does, and if it is still a category 5 storm when it arrives, we could be facing an event unlike anything that we have ever seen before.
Do you remember Hurricane Katrina? Well, scientists now know that when it hit New Orleans it had already been downgraded to just a “low category 3” storm…
To put this all in perspective, Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane out over some hot spots in the Gulf. But when it hit New Orleans, scientists now know, Katrina had winds at a low Category 3, and much of them Category 2, including the “left side winds” that then came down from the north and pushed the surge-swollen waters of Lake Pontchartrain over and through NOLA’s levees. (Hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, so when Katrina came ashore just east of New Orleans, its winds hit the city from the north.)
Only three Category 5s have come ashore in the United States in the past century — the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992.
And Hurricane Harvey was just a category 4 storm.
If Hurricane Irma were to make landfall as a category 5 storm with sustained winds of 180 miles per hour, it would rip buildings and everything else in its path to shreds.
Next week we shall find out what happens. Let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.
Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.
Irmina Update:
The Island Packet, “Hurricane Irma back to Category 2, but its track makes a pronounced turn”, 2 Sep 2017:
Hurricane Irma become a Category 2 storm once more in the National Hurricane Center’s 5 a.m. update, but as its strength fluctuates, its track now shows a distinct northwestern turn.
Irma is currently located about 1300 miles east of the Leeward Islands, and is moving west at 14 mph. It has maximum sustained winds of 110 mph with gusts up to 132 mph.
While Irma has remained in a somewhat weakened state over the past day or so, it is expected to move into warmer waters and better wind conditions in about a day, and is expected to be a major hurricane again as it approaches the Lesser Antilles at the beginning of next week.
It is expected to reach Category 4 status by next Wednesday, with forecast sustained winds of 132 mph and gusts over 160.
The NHC track for Irma looks only five days out, but there are other, more speculative forecast models.
No coastal watches or warnings have yet been issued for Irma. Watches and warnings are typically issued 36 hours before a tropical cyclone poses a threat to a coastal area. So, as alarming as some of the information coming in might be, people can take solace in the knowledge that they will have plenty of warning if Irma looks to threaten the U.S. coast.
“It’s still 2,000 miles away, and anything over the Atlantic Ocean moving generally westward, by geographical definition, would be ‘aiming in the general direction of the United States,’” said NHC spokesman Dennis Feltgen. “It is far to early to tell what, if any, impacts will be felt on the continental U.S.”
Feltgen also said that Irma is a useful reminder that we are in the peak of hurricane season, and that as such, people in hurricane prone areas should be prepared, just in case.
“Check your supplies and make sure you have a hurricane plan,” said Feltgen. “The last thing you want is to be doing this on the fly if you happen to be in an area where hurricane watches or warnings go up. Not that we expect that to happen any time soon, but use this weekend, when stores are open and everyone has supplies, to take advantage of that.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 05 October 2016 03:13.
Macleans, “China is buying Canada: Inside the new real estate frenzy”
How China’s affection for Canada’s real estate is reshaping the nation’s housing market well beyond Vancouver
Paul Shen can tick off the reasons Mainland Chinese people buy property in Canada as surely as any fast-talking B.C. realtor. Some long to escape the fouled earth and soupy air of their country’s teeming cities, he explains, while others are following relatives to enclaves so well-populated by other Chinese expats they hardly feel like foreigners.
The richest, of course, regard homes in the West as stable vessels for disposable cash, but Shen lays no claim to such affluence. Last spring, the 39-year-old left behind his middle-management advertising job in Shanghai to seek the dream of home ownership he and his wife couldn’t afford in their home city. “We just followed our hearts to begin a totally different life,” he tells Maclean’s, adding: “We can make the house dream come true in Canada.”
The starting point was one-half of a modest duplex near downtown Victoria, close to the university where his wife is seeking a master’s degree, and priced about right for their limited means. Selling points ranged from the quiet of the street—perfect for their six-year-old son—to the stunning Vancouver Island vistas all around. High on his list, though, was Victoria’s comfortable distance from the bustling Chinese communities of B.C.’s Lower Mainland. As Shen—betraying his limited knowledge of pre-settlement Canadian history—puts it: “We wanted a place that would allow us to live with the natives.”
It’s hard not to smile at his idealism. Substitute any one of two dozen nationalities, after all, and you have a chapter in Canada’s cherished narrative of migration, settlement and shared prosperity.
But as a Chinese newcomer with a buy-at-all-costs resolve, Shen also personifies a phenomenon dividing those “natives” he’d like to call his neighbours. In the past five years, the flow of money from mainland China into Canadian real estate has reached what many consider dangerous levels, contributing to a gold-rush atmosphere in the nation’s leading cities, while stirring anger among young, middle-class Canadians who feel shut out of their hometown markets.
Its impact on Vancouver’s gravity-defying boom is the best known—and most hotly debated—example, as eye-popping price gains leave behind such quaint indicators as average household income, or regional economic activity. “We’re bringing in people who just want to park their money here,” says Justin Fung, a software engineer and second-generation Chinese-Canadian who counts himself among those frustrated by Vancouver’s surreal housing market. “They’re driving up housing prices and simply treat this city as a resort.” Full story at Macleans
B.C.’s natural resources are being gobbled up by foreign entities at a record pace. Increasingly, those entities are controlled by governments, such as China’s, that may have motives beyond mere profits. (Return to B.C.‘s Top 100 of 2011.)
[...]
It’s that potential for conflict of interest that has a few people worried. Jock Finlayson, executive vice-president of the Business Council of B.C., appreciates the “investment renaissance” that B.C. is now experiencing, but recommends a cautious approach.
“Canada needs to look at this,” he says. “I don’t know what the right answer is, but I do agree that the private-sector rules don’t apply to state-owned organizations, and it’s not just the Chinese. It requires an explicit look. Do we hold them to a higher test? They are going to have to do it sooner rather than later.”
John Bruk, who 27 years ago co-founded and headed the Asia Pacific Foundation, pulls no punches on this topic. He sees a need for some concerted action before too many horses have fled the barn. Bruk has prepared a comprehensive analysis of the track record of the foundation; he believes the government-funded organization needs to be re-energized in part because of China’s growing economic influence, and believes it needs to do much more to help Canada address an unsustainable trade deficit with China. (Disclosure: I provided editing services for Bruk on this paper.)
“Is trading our ownership and control of core assets for more consumer goods, resulting in unsustainable trade deficits, good for Canada?” Bruk asks in his report. “Are we jeopardizing prosperity for our children and grandchildren while putting at risk our economic independence? In my view, this is exactly what is happening.”
Posted by DanielS on Friday, 05 August 2016 09:09.
Visigard Post, “The Visegrád Four unite on forest management and ecology,” 3 August 2016:
Slovakia – The Visegrád Group’s countries signed a memorandum of collaboration for forest management.
The ministers and secretaries of state responsible for Agriculture and Forestry met in Slovakia on July 8 to sign a memorandum of collaboration across the Visegrád Group (V4). The document led to lay the foundations of cooperation between Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary for forest management covering several countries, the permanent exchange of information on the forestry sector, knowledge exchange industry experts and professionals, supranational cooperation in joint programs and especially the establishment of a common forest policy for the V4.
All parties have agreed to support the efforts which they have undertaken on their own, and have created a working group to follow up their work. Departmental officials will meet once a year and specific working groups will be created as needed. For now on, at a regional scale and inside the EU, the Visegrád Group will speak with one voice on the issues of forest management and ecology.
Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 06 July 2016 08:07.
The next time Anglin or his outfit the Daily Stormer need to be criticized, and that shouldn’t be long, we will certainly not refrain.
However, let it not be said that we are petty and unwilling to allow contributing voices where they might, simply because they and their platforms are generally off the mark.
You won’t often see me endorsing an article from over there, but once in a while he posts a decent one, such as this one by Martin Blaine:
An article has been making the rounds recently about Madonna posting pictures of the giant Kenyan slum of Kibera on her Instagram, in the hopes of tugging on the heartstrings of White people.
The Material Girl who never stops reinventing herself, Madonna, a seven-time Grammy Award-winner, actress, pop culture icon, founder of Raising Malawi and a Goodwill Ambassador for Child Welfare is in Kenya.
The 57-year old icon with an estimated net worth of over $800 million spent the day visiting Kibra, also known as Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.
In an Instagram post published only a few minutes ago, Madonna shared some of the moments from her visit today to the slum with Shining Hope for Communities, an organization that links free schools for girls to essential services for communities like clean water, and free health care.
The charity that she’s stumping for support for, Shining Hope for Communities, was founded by a Jewess from Denver, Jessica Posner. Posner supposedly fell in love with a Kenyan Negro and then went on to open a school for Kenyan girls and install some toilets and is now out to bring joy and brightness to the underprivileged Africans, et cetera.
All of this, of course, has earned her much praise and adulation from self-righteous liberals and fellow tribe members.
For her efforts, Posner has been named one of the five biggest world-changers under age 25 by the Do Something Awards.
So on July 19 — 10,000 miles and just as many worlds removed from East Africa — she will be hanging at the Hollywood Palladium with the likes of Matt Damon and Natalie Portman for a star-studded awards ceremony to be hosted by Jane Lynch of “Glee” and nationally televised on VH1.
That’s the kind of random polarity in the world that Posner has learned to accept.
Jessica Posner and Kennedy Odede
The entire concept of feeding starving Africans and somehow raising them up to our level is clearly insane, and the long-term implications of such an endeavor are mind-numbingly depressing and terrifying.
The population of Kenya was recorded at just under 7 million in 1955. It’s now 47 million and one of the fastest growing in the world, thanks to our misplaced altruism.
And for what purpose?
Liberals don’t care about the lives of Africans. They think they do, but they really don’t. They care about their own feelings. They want things to be a certain way in the world such that it leaves them room for a life filled with hope and inspiration. They don’t want to be depressed about the world. Unfortunately, the reality of the world at the current point in history is extremely dire, and anyone who appreciates it for what it actually is is inevitably going to suffer bouts of depression. And also unfortunately, most people react to that situation by retreating into a fantasy that reality can be changed by wishful thinking and meaningless activity.
What’s going to happen when you feed and cloth Africans is they’re going to produce more Africans for you to feed and cloth. That’s what they’ve been doing for the past several decades now. There were starving African children on television commercials when I was a child in the 70s, with a White man standing in their midst telling you that for just 35 cents a day you could save one. Undoubtedly many people signed up and adopted an African child via Unicef or whatever it was. And today dozens of descendants of that saved African child are picking around in the garbage dumps of Kibera looking for food. But now celebrities want your money to start schools and get them Internet access. Forget about the 35 cents a day for a bag of rice, we’ve got much larger ambitions today. We’re not just going to feed Africa, we’re going to make Africa fully capable of “realizing its potential.”
Teach a man to fish, and all that.
Feeding starving Africans only creates more starving Africans.
Anyone can see that this is nonsense – anyone who wants to see, anyway. The problem of world poverty cannot be solved in this manner. It has not been, and it will not be.
But Liberals don’t give a crap about that. Liberals want to do something. They want you to help them do something. They’re gonna fix it. They’re gonna change it. They’re not just going to end poverty and hunger and misery, they’re going to make Africa into some kind of beautiful Utopia. The fact that it doesn’t happen doesn’t concern them. The fact that they’re actually compounding the problem doesn’t concern them. They just plain don’t give a crap. They don’t want to make the world a better place, they want to make themselves feel better by pretending they’re making the world a better place.
The situation today is far worse than it was in the 70s if you count the number of people actually experiencing poverty and hunger and misery in the world. And not just in Africa, but all over the Third – or, as it’s now called, the “developing” – World. The problem is it’s not developing. Nor is it going to develop. The First World isn’t developing either. All that’s happening is more and more people are being born into a stagnant world. There are many times as many human beings alive. Most of those human beings are capable of very little in the way of development, of themselves or of a society around themselves. That was not a particularly unfortunate or desperate thing a hundred years ago. It is however calamitous at this point, since there is simply no way it can be sustained.
The State Department hoped Poland could be a “laboratory for testing whether U.S. success in developing shale gas can be repeated in a different country.”
Until an Eastern European Intermarium can come into effect, Poland’s land and people are in a position to be compromised by people like Hillary, her corporate and YKW backing. Fracking is a dubious technology, destructive to farms, ground water and public health. The profitability of the technology is highly suspect, while cash strapped farmers find it hard to resist (if they can at all) the short term pay-off.
Barack Obama’s Executive Action on immigration, which provided a free break for nonwhite invaders who entered the US before January 1, 2014, created an “open border” situation with Mexico, the head of the National Border Patrol Council (NPBC) told the US Congress.
NPBC president Brandon Judd told the House Judiciary Committee that Border Patrol agents were instructed to take invaders’ “word for it” that they had been in the US before that date, even though they were dripping wet after just having crossed the Rio Grande River.
Judd said that Border Patrol agents were ordered to “release dripping-wet illegal immigrants at the Rio Grande unless they actually see them climbing out of the river.
“This has created what amounts to an open border with Mexico,” Judd said.
The agents were, he continued, given the orders verbally soon after President Obama laid out plans for limiting immigration enforcement in 2014.
“We have apprehended illegal aliens just north of the border who are still soaking wet from crossing the river. If they claim, as increasingly they are doing, that they have been here since January 1, 2014, we will process and then release them,” Judd said in written testimony following up on questions from a hearing earlier this year.
“They are still wet from the river and miles from any civilization and on their word alone we release them unless we physically saw them cross the river,” he said. “This policy de facto creates an open border with Mexico for any illegal alien who wants to claim that they were here before 2014.”
The January 1, 2014, date was part of Obama’s “enforcement priorities” he laid out in November that year, which were designed to remove the threat of deportation to the vast majority of the illegal invaders in the US.
The Obama plan consists of giving long-time illegal immigrants “lower priority” for deportation in favor of recent border-crossers, and those with gang ties or who have amassed serious criminal records in addition to their immigration violations.
The rule meant that those illegal immigrants already in the pipeline for deportation were told they could have their cases dropped if they met the new cutoff and didn’t have serious criminal records.
Judd said that the invaders had quickly learned to “game the system,” and if apprehended anywhere, simply said that they had arrived before 2014—and Border Patrol agents had been instructed to simply “take their word for it” even if it was patently untrue.
Judd added that under the verbal directions, agents have been told to fingerprint illegal immigrants and process them to see if they have serious criminal records.
But those that claim to have been here since 2013, and who don’t show up with problems in their criminal history, are released into the US rather than held for deportation.
Rep. Bob Goodlatte, Virginia Republican and Judiciary Committee Chairman, agreed, and said that the order had led to more illegal immigrants trying to make the trip into the US.
“Word has spread around the world about the administration’s lax immigration policies and now we see unlawful immigrants gaming the system and the administration’s so-called ‘enforcement priorities’ to come here,” said Goodlatte, after listening to Judd’s testimony.
Rerevisionist: April 11, 2016 at 6:33 pm - “Obama’s ‘own country’ is not the USA.”
“We’re talking total destruction” 
